Post by Vio on Aug 2, 2023 13:14:59 GMT -5
Hey, folks! Well, it’s time to present a rather strange idea for the future of Bon Voyage, and to get your opinions and feedback on it!
The Limits of the Present
As BV is now, all of our characters and stories are told in a singular instance of the world of One Piece—a deviation from the canon events of the series starting from the Time Skip’s tail end and the effects that the Summit War had on the world. While this is absolutely fine, the fact we share a single instance of the same world means that some stories are awkward, difficult, or outright impossible to tell. The very world of One Piece is a power funnel, but that also means it’s a bottleneck for anyone seeking greater goals.
Many players and their characters seek the One Piece to become the Pirate King. While that as a goal is realistically unachievable in our meta knowledge (and lack thereof) of the series as is, that shouldn’t dampen each character’s pursuit of such a goal. The problem that exists is that if any one character achieves that goal, no other character can then do so, even if that’s the story that the player wanted to tell.
While Pirate King is certainly a major goal to work towards, this problem exists in many other forms throughout the world we play in: If somebody does something first, then it becomes impossible for anyone else to do it. If somebody defeats Kaido, nobody else can do that, because he’s been defeated. The singular, static instance of the world enforces a “first come, first serve” hierarchy—the longest serving and fastest posting members take the cake while the rest are left with just the crumbs.
If multiple people want to tell the same type of story, then it becomes impossible for them to do so. While we’re all expected to make compromises for the sake of telling a collaborative story, there are most certainly times where those compromises become a complete roadblock on your intended route rather than just a small diversion. Similarly, the singular shared instance forces us (the staff) to impose numerous limitations on what can and can’t be done because of how it could complicate the setting for everyone if new information comes to light.
The Ideal Storytelling Environment
The very nature of a community storytelling experience already places obstacles in front of what we would otherwise want to achieve by telling our own, individual stories. However, the ideal environment would have to be a collection of things: It would have to be friendly toward the setting it intends to use; it would need to allow everyone to be able to use the materials of the setting in different ways for the purpose of their storytelling, and; it would need to respect the limitations of collaborative storytelling efforts.
A single universe, even as an Alternate Universe, cannot hope to accomplish all three of the above highlighted points. It’s not feasible to allow everyone to use the same materials in different ways, because that immediately goes against the idea of respecting the limitations of collaborative stories. You can only ever accomplish two of the points, never the third.
The Multiversal Soup
This suggestion is based around fulfilling all three of the points highlighted above, but I have no doubt it will be a controversial topic to broach. The idea is to enable storytelling while remaining as friendly to the setting as possible, respecting collaborative storytelling and individual storytelling alike, and generally allowing everyone to use the provided material to their own liking (within sufficient reason). The soup metaphor is strong with this one, so get your ladles ready!
A Pot of Ingredients
The expansive world of One Piece is an absolute treat to roleplay and tell stories with. It provides so much to potentially work with—people, places, events, etc—and these very things are our ingredients. Even now, we use them to tell stories, but we’re significantly limited in how we do so because all of these ingredients always have to be put in our shared pot in a static order, like following a recipe.
But what if each player could pick and choose which ingredients they took to make their soup with? Conceptually, this would allow every character to exist within their own bubble within that soup, selecting the ingredients that are most necessary to the story the player envisions and omitting the rest. The result is a potentially limitless but distinctly setting-friendly assortment of multiverses, each telling different potential stories.
One bubble could be set in a timeline where the Summit War never happened, Whitebeard remains alive (or perhaps he’s simply died of age and illness as his withering condition suggested) and the Marines are still under the vigilant command of Sengoku. Another could be set in a world where Luffy was never born and the entire story of the Strawhats never transpired—if he didn’t defeat Crocodile, what would have happened? Another still could be set in the era of Gol D. Roger himself, taking place many years before our present timeline.
The possibilities are endless! However, the collaborative storytelling side of things gets in the way of this, because the general goal is to work together to tell stories. But what if you still could? What if your character’s story could freely overlap with the stories of others despite differences in their respective bubbles? Well…
The Rainbow Mist
A concept originally used in a filler arc of the anime, the name lends itself to some inspirational ideas that admittedly feel strange, even in the context of One Piece as a whole. Each character can only see so far into the hypothetical mist of their own universe. Everything beyond that is unknown and irrelevant to their personal story—unless you want it to be!
While characters are more than capable of existing within their own bubble, the mist works in strange and unforeseen ways. It enables players to take ingredients from other bubbles that they might enjoy—such as a particular island’s destruction or the defeat of a particular individual—and use them in their universe without necessarily being a direct part of the bubbles that caused them. Characters can merge and split bubbles as necessary, allowing players to have character meetings that might otherwise not work in the separated universes those characters exist in, provided the members collaborate on what makes the most sense for them and agree as such. You can even treat some of these interactions as non-canon filler arcs for your characters, but what might be non-canon to one might not be to the other.
The mist serves as a gateway between the many worlds and stories we all wish to tell and, as such, enables some appropriately strange and wonderful shenanigans. For one, the onus of the bubble your character exists within is on you. If multiple people agree to play the same bubble, they can! If you don’t want to be part of another, particular bubble, you are not forced to! Essentially, the mist allows multiple stories that would otherwise clash to be told… without actually clashing.
The mist is the thickest parts of that multiversal soup, mixing freely and in unusual ways, though that does facilitate some additional shenanigans:
Canonical Shifts: New Potentials
Though I speak for myself when I say this, I’m sure others have felt the same. Another constraint of our singular, shared world is that we (as mentioned before) have to hedge out potentially conflicting details and difficult interactions. But, if everyone can have their own bubbles using different ingredients, many of those issues fade into the mist.
It becomes fully reasonable for a character to have been the slave of a Celestial Dragon without causing any potential worldly problems, because their instance—their bubble—allows for it. It becomes possible for characters to have interacted with certain canonical elements on a closer basis without issue, because that interaction is unique to them—those seeking to become the World’s Greatest Swords(wo)man can have their run-in with Mihawk! It becomes possible for a particular canon character to have impacted a player character’s story in a more direct sense because it doesn’t become a contest between individuals looking for a similar plot beat.
Of course, certain things would still be somewhat limited, but those instances would be based on our overall understanding of the setting rather than a particularly awkward situation arising. This mix of soup and mist makes for so many potential stories, all waiting to be told. Of course, there will always be several main constants of One Piece, but let’s talk about one that has been a thorn in the side of some for a long time…
Devil Fruits
As we know, Devil Fruits are unique. There cannot be more than one instance of each Devil Fruit in active circulation—only the first bite grants the power up until the user’s death. Thanks to the mist, however, it is technically possible for there to be multiple users of the same Devil Fruit, all within different bubbles, with the main barrier being that those individuals could never canonically interact with one another. One cannot exist in the same space as the other, because that would break the setting, and the mist does its utmost to prevent such impossible events. There cannot be two true users of the Mera Mera no Mi in the same bubble.
This means that the usual struggle and “first come, first serve” nature of Devil Fruits on site is omitted. This also enables canon Devil Fruits to be attainable by players, because their characters that own those powers perhaps come from bubbles where that particular Devil Fruit never found its way into the hands of the canon character that we know owns it—they might never have existed, even! In regards to original powers, however, permission would be needed from the creator should you wish to have a copy of their creation (and it would still need to be re-applied for in your own words and style).
The Final Form
In short, the Multiversal Soup and its many bubbles—coupled with the mysterious phenomenon that is the Rainbow Mist—allows for all manner of stories to be told with far less limits as the current site enforces. It doesn’t prevent collaborative efforts, but it also doesn’t force them upon players, either. It offers a solution (albeit a very strange one) to potentially odd meetings, but otherwise allows people to shape and mold the world around their character. Creating new villains, recycling canonical ones? It’s all possible within this idea, and if you want to peer through the mist and have events in other bubbles affect your character’s bubble (or not), that’s your choice—that’s your helping of our soup.
And remember, people’s dreams… don’t ever end! Am I right?